It’s everyone’s number-1 question about the coronavirus pandemic: just how bad could things get?
The latest answer is anything but reassuring.
In fact, it’s shocking: 100,000-200,000 Americans dead.
And that’s apparently a best-case scenario.
Appearing Monday on NBC’s “Today” show, White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx emphasized that the administration is “very worried” that the virus outbreak could easily “get out of control.”
“If we do things together well, almost perfectly, we could get in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 fatalities,” Birx said, adding that “We don’t even want to see that.”
She underscored her point that this projection would involve “100% of Americans doing precisely what is required.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, essentially confirmed Birx’s assessment Monday on CNN, saying: “I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw over 100,000 deaths.”
So what about the worst-case scenario? Birx was asked.
Her answer: administration models show that if restrictions on travel and social distancing are lifted completely, more than 2 million could die.
On Monday the CDC reported that nearly 141,000 Americans had contracted the virus and more than 2,400 had died. This is more-or-less in line with Johns Hopkins University’s virus tracker, which shows more than 144,000 cases and nearly 2,600 deaths.
Fauci and Birx visited the Oval Office on Sunday to deliver the bad news.
“Faced with the grim prospect that 200,000 Americans could die even with aggressive action to slow the spread of the coronavirus,” says the New York Times, on Sunday evening “President Trump extended the guidelines on avoiding nonessential travel, staying away from work, visiting bars and restaurants and gathering in groups of more than 10 for at least another month.”
Trump previously spoke of the pandemic peaking in the U.S. by Easter, just six days away. Now he’s hoping the worst will be over by the end of May. And experts say that, too, is optimistic.
As Vox puts it: “The facts as conveyed today by Birx and Fauci are … extremely sobering and suggest that we’re not even close to putting the darkest phase of the current crisis behind us.”
